The use of MIMO architectures wireless communications systems promises to enhance the capacity of these wireless communications systems by taking advantage of the multipath propagation. The use of multiple transmit and receive antennas in a multipath environment, offers not only spectral efficiency through spatial multiplexing, but also increases reliability through diversity.
Combining MIMO transceivers with relaying networks has been identified as a promising technique for extending the coverage area, combating the shadowing effects, decreasing the power requirements at the transmitter, and for reducing infrastructure deployment costs of the wireless communications systems. Relaying nodes may be employed to forward the data to the destination which is otherwise out of the reach of the source such as in rocky or urban environments, where there are strong shadowing effects. Relays may also be useful for indoor coverage, subways and underground tunnels.
Different relaying strategies have been developed over the last years, and the two most common are regenerative relays, for which a Decode-and-Forward scheme (DF) is needed, and degenerative relays, for which an Amplify-and-Forward scheme (AF) is needed. AF relays are of particular interest since their low complexity and easy deployment (together with their comparable performance) make them attractive from a practical point of view.
Generally, relays are assumed to operate in half-duplex mode where the relay is not receiving and transmitting at the same time or at the same frequency. A drawback with half-duplex relays is that they require two orthogonal channels for transmission and reception, and thus incur a spectral efficiency penalty. Alternatively, the relay can operate in a full-duplex mode where the relay can receive and transmit simultaneously resulting in no loss in spectral efficiency. However, a critical drawback with the full-duplex operation is the resulting self-interference, caused by coupling from the relay's transmission to its own reception, which may severely limit the performance of the relay.
Thus, finding a way to reduce the effects of the self-interference between the output and input of the relay, without the drawbacks described above, is highly sought after.